Borat: The New Global "Polack Joke"

Sacha Baron Cohen is brilliant. I've been a fan of The Ali G Show for a couple of years, admiring the insanely funny Ali G, Borat, and Bruno characters.

Now of course Borat the movie has arrived, and is a global phenomenon.

The Borat character is beyond stupid, which is cool for most of us, because he comes from Kazakhstan, a country that many have never even heard of. To a lot of people, you could say it's a fictional country and they'd believe it. The "Kazakh journalist" stumbles all across America, and that's cool.

In today's NY Times, John Tierney describes Borat as "the new global Polack joke".
We all know Poles or Polish-Americans, but its unlikely that many of us know any Kazakhs, so its cool to show Kazakhs as having cows in the living room and being proud to have sisters that are prostitutes.

Since "Borat" obviously couldn't be filmed in Kazakstan, they found a substitute "Kazakh village" in Glod, Rumania, one of the poorest towns in Romania, itself one of the poorest countries in Europe.

The English Daily Mail, says that the Glod villagers weren't told what type of movie this really was. Since Cohen thrives on pranks, that's not a surprise.

But unless this report is false, some of these villagers were paid three pounds a day--less than ten bucks-- to be portrayed as imbeciles. Nicu Tudorache, a villager with one arm was shown with a sex toy on his stump--he didn't even know what the fucking thing was-- and now the world is laughing at him.

The Daily Mail showed the film's trailer and "many were on the brink of tears as they saw how they were portrayed."

Its one thing to dupe rich celebrities like Donald Trump--but mocking poor villagers, then throwing them 3 pounds a day from your Mercedes--that's not cool at all.